The matchmaking system has been updated to include a performance-based data-driven system, which takes individual player performance into account when determining MMR gains and losses. Under this new system, players will now reach their intended Matchmaking Rating quicker and more accurately. Read our recent blog about Performance-Based Matchmaking to learn more.
In-game Camera height has been significantly increased in order to provide more visibility of the battlefield.
New Hero: Hanzo ( PTR Note: In order to focus playtesting and feedback on the 2018 Gameplay Update and Stealth changes found in this patch, Hanzo will not be available for play on the Public Test Realm until the week of November 27. )
Copy/Paste battlenet://heroes/hero/98/Hanzo in chat, left click the link and - at least at the moment - you can play in Try Mode.
Once heir to the Shimada clan's criminal empire, Hanzo abandoned his birthright after he almost killed his younger brother. He now strives to perfect his skills as a warrior, and sees the Nexus and its endless conflict as the ideal training ground.
PTR Note: In order to focus playtesting and feedback on the 2018 Gameplay Update and Stealth changes found in this patch, Hanzo will not be available for play on the Public Test Realm until the week of November 27.
Trait
Natural Agility (D) Target unpathable terrain or a Structure to jump to the other side of it.
Basic Abilities
Storm Bow (Q) Activate to charge an arrow that deals 270 damage to the first enemy hit. Storm Bow's range increases the longer it is Channeled. Reactivate to fire. Scatter Arrow (W) Fire an arrow that deals 85 to the first enemy Hero hit. Scatter Arrow can collide with terrain and Structures, splitting into 5 arrows that travel extra distance, ricochet up to 4 additional times, and deal 85 damage each to the first enemy hit. Sonic Arrow (E) Fire an arrow that grants vision in a large area 8 seconds. Enemies inside are revealed for 1 second. If Sonic Arrow lands directly on an enemy, it deals 150 damage to them and follows them as they move.
Heroic Abilities
Dragonstrike (R) After 1.5 seconds, summon a pair of Spirit Dragons which travel forward, dealing 52 damage every 0.25 seconds to enemy Heroes in its area. Enemies in the center take 150% damage. Dragon’s Arrow (R) Fire a missile that travels across the battleground. Explodes upon hitting an enemy Hero, dealing 100 damage to all nearby enemies and Stunning them for 0.5 seconds. After traveling a medium distance, the damage is increased to 200 and the Stun duration to 1.25 seconds. After traveling a long distance, the damage is increased to 350 and the Stun duration to 2 seconds.
The first Battleground objective event will now activate 90 seconds into the match, following a 30-second warning, for the following Battlegrounds: Blackheart’s Bay Doubloon Chests will now consistently spawn 3 minutes after the final Chest during a the previous event has been captured. Braxis Holdout Beacon events after the first will now consistently spawn 2 minutes and 10 seconds after a previous Zerg wave has been defeated. Dragon Shire Shrines will now consistently spawn 2 minutes after a Dragon Knight has been killed. The first Battleground objective event will now activate 3 minutes into the match, following a 30-second warning, for the following Battlegrounds: Battlefield of Eternity Cursed Hollow Garden of Terror Haunted Mines Infernal Shrines Sky Temple Towers of Doom Warhead Junction The following Battleground objective timers are unchanged: Tomb of the Spider Queen Volskaya Foundry The Minimap will now indicate the next objective spawn location for the following Battlegrounds: Cursed Hollow The first Shrine indicator will appear on the Minimap 30 seconds after the game begins, and subsequent indicators will appear 15 seconds after the previous Tribute has been captured. Infernal Shrines The first Tribute indicator will appear on the Minimap 30 seconds after the game begins, and subsequent indicators will appear 30 seconds after a Punisher is defeated. Hover the cursor over a Shrine indicator on the Minimap to display whether it will be a Mortar, Frost, or Arcane Shrine. Sky Temple The first Temple indicators will appear on the Minimap 30 seconds after the game begins, as well as 30 seconds after all Temples in the same event have been depleted. Towers of Doom The first Altar indicators will appear on the Minimap 30 seconds after the game begins, as well as 30 seconds after the final Altars in an event has been captured. Warhead Junction The first Warhead indicators will appear on the Minimap 30 seconds after the game begins, as well as 30 seconds after the final Warhead in an event has been collected.
Regeneration Globes will now become neutral (claimable by both teams) if not claimed within 3 seconds. Time before Regeneration Globes expire has been reduced to 6 seconds.
All attacking structures no longer have ammunition. Walls will now be destroyed if their connected Towers and Gate are also destroyed. Walls can still be attacked normally. Tower vision range has been increased by 25% Tower damage to minions has been reduced by 25% Structures now have a warmup period of .5 seconds before firing and must face their targets completely Structure attack warning responsiveness has been significantly improved Standalone Towers (found next to Forts and Keeps) have been removed. The Health, granted Experience, and Damage of Standalone Towers has been redistributed into their surrounding gate Towers, Forts, and Keeps. Forts and Keeps now have True Sight, meaning they will reveal and attack Stealthed Heroes. True Sight is disabled while the Structure is disabled by effects such as the Raven Lord’s Curse or Sylvanas’ Black Arrow Trait.
Respawn Timers Mercenary Camps will now spawn 60 seconds after the game begins Siege Giant Camp Siege Defenders Defending Siege Giant attacks are now telegraphed on the terrain and can be dodged. Siege Laners Attack telegraphing and missile trajectory has been significantly improved. Hellbat Camp Respawn times have been doubled Hellbats will now prioritize structures Defender Hellbat Stats Base health increased by 125%, Health scaling increased by 200% Damage increased by 125% Damage scaling reduced by 50% Laner Hellbat Stats Base health increased by roughly 25% Health scaling increased by 43% Base damage increased by 50% Damage scaling decreased by 66% Damage taken from structures reduced by 50% Attacks now apply a 3-second stacking -5 Armor debuff to all targets, stacking up to 20 times (structures included) Knight Camp Wizard Knight Laner Wizard Knight Laner has a Spell Armor Aura Grants all nearby Allies (Minions, Mercenaries, and Heroes) 30 Spell Armor Spell Armor is immediately removed upon leaving the aura area. This Aura is destroyed when the Wizard is killed Wizard Knight Defender Grants nearby Knight Defenders a 15 Spell Armor aura This Aura is destroyed when the Wizard is killed Sapper Camp Sapper Defenders Now fire their attacks at target areas, instead of directly at Heroes. This behaves like the laning Sappers Sapper Explosion damage now scales over time Health scaling increased by 33% Respawn timer across all maps increased from 105 to 120 seconds Laning Sappers now have 100 Armor vs Structures while charging and Towers will ignore charging Sappers
Zeratul has received updated art to coincide with Talent changes.
Minimap
Minimap art has been updated across all Battlegrounds.
Stealth
Added an overlay to indicate when a Stealthed character goes Invisible Added a new Stealth visual effect. Enemy Stealthed Heroes should now be easier to spot.
The following new cheats have been added to Sandbox Custom Games: Spawn Camps Respawn all Mercenary Camps. Spawn Dummy Creates a dialog allowing players to choose a type of dummy to spawn. Player can then click in the game world to create a dummy of the selected dummy type at mouse cursor position. One player cannot spawn more than 20 dummies. When a player deals damage or heals a target dummy the Target Dummy Panel will pop up displaying the damage or healing dealt. If player deals damage to multiple dummies with an AOE ability, the number will be the combination of damage done to all dummies. If the team hasn't dealt damage or healing to any of the dummies for 8 seconds, the Target Dummy Panel will disappear for that team. If a player hasn't dealt damage or healing to any of the dummies for 8 seconds, their damage and DPS will be reset to 0. Clear Dummies If the "Share Cheat" checkbox is unchecked, remove all the dummies created by all players. If the "Share Cheat" checkbox is checked, remove all the dummies created by that player. Toggle Fog of War Disabling Fog of War for a team will remove Fog of War, revealing the whole map for that team. Reset HP/MP If the "Share Cheat" checkbox is unchecked, reset all players' Health and Mana to full. If the "Share Cheat" checkbox is checked, reset the player's Health and Mana to full. Complete Quests If the "Share Cheat" checkbox is unchecked, complete all talent quests for all player. If the "Share Cheat" checkbox is checked, complete all talent quests for that player. Instant Respawn If the "Share Cheat" checkbox is unchecked, instantly respawn all dead Heroes. If the "Share Cheat" checkbox is checked, instantly respawn the player's Hero.
Issuing a Move command within the Mines while on the Battleground’s upper level, or vice versa, will now cause the Hero to use the Mine Entrance or Exit that is the shortest distance from the issued order. Summoned Grave Golem Fort and Keep attacks no longer reduce attack speed Will no longer interrupt its attacks mid-swing to use an Ability Now passes through player-created walls rather than stopping to destroy them
Added to Rotation Warhead Junction Removed from Rotation Volskaya Foundry Garden of TerrorThe full Ranked Battleground Rotation is now as follows: Battlefield of Eternity Braxis Holdout Cursed Hollow Dragon Shire Infernal Shrines Sky Temple Tomb of the Spider Queen Towers of Doom Warhead Junction
Stealth players will now become “Invisible” after remaining still for 1.5 seconds. Invisible Heroes will not display the Stealth visual effect and can still be removed from Stealth by taking damage. This includes Heroes under the effects of temporary Stealth effects such as Samuro’s Windwalk or Tyrande’s Shadowstalk. Additionally, Heroes cannot become Invisible while occupying a capture point, such as Braxis Holdout or Mercenary Camp Beacons. Instead, they will retain normal Stealth visual effects.
General Hero portraits will now be displayed when heroes are inside the following Vehicles, Battleground objectives, or Hero Abilities: Dragon Knight Garden Terror Triglav Protector Anub'arak - Cocoon Lt. Morales – Medivac Dropship Stitches - Gorge Zagara - Devouring Maw Manual Talent Tier and Hero Status Callouts Players can now press ALT + left-click Hero portraits and the Team Level UI at the top of the screen to generate notifications for the following situations: Press ALT + left-click an ally’s Hero portrait to inform teammates when that ally needs assistance. ALT + left-clicking a dead Hero’s portrait will generate a chat message indicating that Hero’s remaining respawn time. ALT + left-clicking an enemy Hero portrait will ping that Hero’s location on the Minimap if they are within allied vision. If that enemy is outside of allied vision, a chat message will inform allies that the Hero is missing. Press ALT + right-click the Team Level UI to indicate when both teams are on even Talent tiers, or when one team has a Talent tier advantage over the other.
Snipe (Q) Damage reduced from 310 to 255. Baseline quest added: Hitting an enemy Hero increases the damage of Snipe by 5% stacking 5 times. When at max stacks (5) it gains an additional 25% damage. If Snipe fails to hit a target, all stacks are lost. Pinning Shot (W) Damage from 110 to 105 Holo Decoy (E) Added functionality: Decoys now deal 10% of Nova’s damage Permanent Cloak (Trait) Added functionality: Gain 15% movement speed while Stealthed Triple Tap (R) Damage per shot from 338 to 372 (New) Ghost Protocol (1) Activate to instantly cloak, leave a Holo Decoy at your feet, and become unrevealable for .5 seconds.
Talents
Level 1 Advanced Cloaking (Trait) New functionality: Increase your Stealth movement speed by 5%. While Stealthed, gain 2 additional mana regeneration per second. Level 7 Snipe Master (Q) Removed Perfect Shot (Q) Moved from Level 16 Cooldown reduction on Hero hit reduced from 3 to 2 seconds Level 13 Psionic Efficiency (Q) Bonus range increased from 10 to 15% (New Talent) Ionic Force Field (Trait) Gain 25 Armor for 2 seconds after losing stealth Level 16 Lethal Decoy (E) Damage bonus from clones increased from 40 to 50% Level 20 (New Talent) Apollo Suit (Trait) Reduce the cooldown of Permanent Cloak from 3 to 1 second
Mirror Image (Q) Samuro will now appear in the direction of the player’s Mouse Cursor when Mirror Image is cast. Mirror Image damage is no longer a fraction of Samuro’s Attack Damage. Mirror Image base damage has been greatly reduced to 9. Mirror Images are no longer instantly destroyed by Structures Critical Strike (W) Cooldown increased from 8 to 10 seconds Illusion Master (R) New functionality: Reduce the cooldown of Advancing Strikes to 8 seconds Now increases the attack damage of Mirror Images by 100% Now also increases Samuro’s Basic Attack damage by 10% Image Transmission (Trait) Additional functionality: Activate to switch places with the target Mirror Image, removing most negative effects from Samuro and the target Mirror Image. 25-second cooldown.
Talents
Tooltips for various talents have been updated to reflect whether Samuro or his Mirror Images benefit from their effects Level 1 Way of the Wind (E) New Functionality: Gain 40% Movement Speed for 3 seconds upon entering or exiting Stealth by using Wind Walk Way of the Blade (W) No longer grants bonus Critical Strike damage Way of Illusion (Q) Mirror Images no longer benefit from this talent Level 4 One with the Wind (E) Armor gain now also lasts for 3 seconds after being revealed Mirror Images now also gain Armor Armor amount reduced from 60 to 30 Level 7 Phantom Pain (W) Mirror Images no longer benefit from this talent Crushing Blows (W) Mirror Images no longer benefit from this talent Bonus Critical Strike damage has been removed Additional functionality: Samuro’s Basic Attacks against enemy Heroes reduce the cooldown of Critical Strike by 1.5 seconds Level 13 Kawarimi (E) Reduced the time between Samuro issuing a new order after using Wind Walk and the image following it. It should now be harder for the new Image to follow Samuro’s new movements after using Wind Walk. Level 16 Press the Attack (Trait) Attack Speed bonus reduced from 15% to 10% per stack. Maximum bonus decreased from 60% to 40% Harsh Winds (E) Mirror Images no longer benefit from this talent Merciless Strikes (W) Mirror Images no longer benefit from this talent
Vanish (D) Movement Speed increased from 10% to 20% Ambush (Q) If Valeera is Vanished for 3 seconds, this ability has 5 range and teleports Valeera behind her target. Damage reduced from 180 to 130 Now also reduces enemy Armor by 10 for 4 seconds Cheap Shot (W) Stun duration reduced from 1.25 to .75 seconds Now Blinds the target for 2 seconds after the stun effect ends If Valeera is Vanished for 3 seconds, this ability has 5 range and teleports Valeera behind her target Garrote (E) Silence duration increased from 2.25 to 2.75 seconds If Valeera is Vanished for 3 seconds, this ability has 5 range and teleports Valeera behind her target
Talents
Level 1 Subtlety (D) Adjusted functionality: Now triggers when Valeera teleports to her target with Ambush, Cheap Shot, and Garrote. Energy return reduced from 10 to 8 per second. Crippling Poison (Active) Slow duration reduced from 5 to 4 seconds. Valeera’s poison is no longer removed after the first damaging Ability, but instead is applied by all Valeera's Abilities for 4 seconds. This duration does not start until Valeera damages her first enemy. Level 4 Wound Poison (Active) Healing reduction duration decreased from 5 to 4 seconds Valeera’s poison is no longer removed after the first damaging Ability, but instead is applied by all Valeera's Abilities for 4 seconds. This duration does not start until Valeera damages her first enemy Level 7 Slice and Dice (E) Valeera's Basic Attacks now restore 2 Energy. Level 13 Death from Above (Q) New functionality: Ambush reduces the cooldown of Vanish by 4 seconds. Blind (W) Now increases the duration of Cheap Shot’s Blind from 2 to 4 seconds. Strangle (E) Spell Power reduction increased from 25% to 40% Duration reduced from 7 to 6 seconds Level 16 Assassinate (Q) Bonus damage reduced from 100% to 50% Now also increases the Armor reduction of Ambush by 10 when the target is isolated. Moved from level 7 Expose Armor (E) Removed. Level 20 Nightslayer (D) Removed. Rupture (D) Damage bonus now stacks immediately to 100%, instead of stacking up to 30%. Moved from level 16 Elusiveness (D) Moved from Level 13 Movement Speed bonus increased from 10% to 20%
Shadow Assault (R) Removed (New Talent) Might of the Nerazim (R) Passive: After using an Ability, Zeratul’s next Basic Attack within 6 seconds deals 40% more damage Activate to duplicate the last ability cast. Damaging abilities deal 50% less damage. This ability does not benefit from talents. 20-Second Cooldown
Talents
Level 1 Vorpal Blade (1) Added as a baseline ability. Default Hotkey: 1 (New Talent) Move Unseen (Passive) Gain 25% bonus Movement Speed while Stealthed Shadow Hunter (E) Regen Globe required for quest completion reduced from 20 to 15 Mana cost reduction of Blink increased from 2 to 3 Level 4 Combo Slash (Passive) Removed Grim Task (Passive) Removed (New Talent) Psionic Strength (Passive) Damaging an enemy Hero with Basic Attacks or Abilities increases Zeratul's damage by 6% for 3 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. (New Talent) Darkness Descends (Active) Passive: Increase Zeratul’s attack speed by 10%. Activated ability – Zeratul gains 40% bonus attack speed for 5 seconds. 30-second cooldown Level 7 Wormhole (E) Duration increased from 2 to 3 seconds Slip into Shadow (E) Removed (New Talent) Warp Skirmisher (1) Vorpal Blade now has 2 charges. Casting Vorpal Blade also causes Zeratul's next Basic Attack within 6 seconds to deal 30% bonus damage Level 16 Sentenced to Death (W) Bonus damage reduced from 40 to 30% Level 20 Rewind (Active) Removed Nerazim Fury (R) Removed (New Talent) Twilight Falls (R) Activating Might of the Nerazim resets the cooldown of all of Zeratul’s Basic Abilities (New Talent) Shadow Mending (Passive) Zeratul heals himself for 75% of Ability Damage Dealt to enemy Heroes
Hanzo Kinoko Honzo Sora Hanzo Dragon Hanzo Demon Hanzo Farstrider Hanzo Icebound Farstrider Hanzo Iron Farstrider Hanzo Holy Farstrider Hanzo Scarlet Farstrider Hanzo Genji Storm Oni Genji Golden Genji Nihon Genji Leoric Immortal Space Lord Leoric Lúcio Azure Soundblast Lúcio Lunara Harvest Champion Lunara Zarya Citrine Thunderguard Zarya Industrial Zarya
New Mounts
The following Mounts have been awarded to players who reached Platinum in Hero League or Bronze in Team League during 2017 Ranked Season 3: Titanium Cybersteed Carbon Cybersteed Master Cybersteed The following Mounts have been awarded to players who reached Master or higher in Hero League or Team League during 2017 Ranked Season 3: Epic Titanium Cybersteed Epic Carbon Cybersteed Epic Master Cybersteed
Fixed a number of typo and tooltip errors across several aspects of the game.
Art
Kharazim: Kharazim's arms and upper body now animated correctly during his dizzy animation. Leoric: The Shroud of the Dead King Talent will now correctly play an animation and a sound when activated. Samuro: Monkey King Samuro’s model will no longer exhibit flickering during Hero Select while running Medium or High graphic settings. The Lost Vikings: Fixed an issue causing Baelog to cast superfluous shadows on the terrain.
Battlegrounds
Sky Temple: Fixed an issue that could prevent Temple lasers from appearing correctly on the Minimap. Structures: Auriel's Blinding Flash and Artanis' Suppression Pulse can no longer Blind Structures. Towers of Doom: The Headless Horseman Boss is no longer incorrectly categorized as a Monster. Volskaya Foundry: Fixed an issue in which Heroes on the outer edge of the Hall of Storms would not receive Healing or protection.
Heroes, Abilities, and Talents
Alexstrasza: Life-Binder is no longer interrupted when entering or exiting Dragonqueen. Diablo: Fixed an issue that could cause Shadow Charge to deal its collision damage multiple times under certain circumstances. Garrosh: Casting Wrecking Ball on Mercenaries will no longer cause them to leash while in combat. Gul'dan: Movement caused by a conveyor belt will no longer cancel Rain of Destruction channeling. Kel'thuzad: The Power of Icecrown Talent will now correctly grant bonus Spell Power for enemy Heroes Slowed by Chains of Kel’Thuzad with the Chains of Ice Talent. Li-Ming: Zei's Vengeance and Arcane Orb tooltips have been updated to clarify bonus damage functionality. Damage amounts have not been changed. Lt. Morales: The Second Opinion Talent will now correctly grant cooldown reduction when one of the Heroes struck by Displacement Grenade is piloting a Vehicle, like the Garden Terror. Lunara: Fixed an inconsistency that allowed Lunara to cast Leaping Strike over some, but not all, allied units after learning Boundless Stride. Medivh: Creating a Portal entrance after learning Portal Mastery and then entering the Triglav Protector will no longer prevent him from using the Protector’s abilities. Muradin: Learning Reverberation no longer incorrectly updates the Attack Speed Slow amount in Thunder Clap’s tooltip. Murky: Spawn Egg with the Egg Hunt Talent can now be cast correctly on Volskaya Foundry’s conveyor belts.
User Interface
Death Recap: Fortification Camp Turret attacks now display a Turret icon in the Death Recap screen.
Big changes, especially to stealthies, eager to try this out, Zeratul with baseline Vorpal Blade is going to feel so damn strong, and then buffed Samuro attack damage means he is going to hit very hard, curious to see how it all plays out.
Also kind of surprised no mention of Hanumura, I guess the map was so bad they just took it out and put it in the trash can.
Hanamura would be even more complicated with the changes coming up. Dont think people are ready for a map like this. As Towers of Doom likes to show over and over in my games. Which is basically easy Hanamura.
Played a bit with some friends on the PTR. TL;DR: Minions are gods now, stealthies play similarly but are very, very easy to spot when moving, regen globe changes favor pushing comps/lane dominance, new camera is really nice. (Actually, I didn't even get to half of what I put in the TLDR, but not much needs to be said about the others, I think).
We'll be doing a full writeup of the changes over the next few weeks, but I wanted to reveal some of the maths our guy ChaosOS has been doing for us. According to him, there were a lot of stealth changes that were not in the patch notes, but the most notable is that minions now do an additional 10% damage AND have 10% more health. The result is approximately a 60% increase in damage on towers per wave. This makes sense to some degree because towers are tankier after the redistribution of health and the removal of ammo, but minions are, quite simply, gods now if they go unanswered.
Interestingly enough, this is exacerbated by the fact that each wave spawns two potential regen globes. This means that lane dominance stacks up even harder now. Lane bullies not only win harder, but they push harder too because minions do far more damage and are more difficult to clear. If you draft a pushing comp, you can push all the way to Core without any serious mana/health problems.
These two things will cause a lot of problems with drafting strategy and generally make it a bit cheesier. Lane bullies will be god tier. Pushing strats, especially on maps like Braxis and Dragon Shire, will be very, very strong. I honestly think that neutral regen globes may have to be abandoned to avoid a major balance issue. In lieu of straight up removing the mechanic, we can expect some big globe nerfs.
On November 22 2017 23:19 karazax wrote: According the patch notes the minions should have the same health, but structures do 25% less damage to minions.
The minions have 10% more health. It's a noticeable difference while trying to waveclear on the PTR. This is one of the stealth changes Blizz made that's not on the patch notes.
Had one game on Zeratul and he really feels super fun, even more so than he always was. I think Might of the Nerazhim will be a must to make him do decent damage and that will hurt him but at Lvl 20 he is completely ridiculous and the mobility and the skill cap are insane.
Will be a bit weird at first that stealth is just a untargetable instead of stealth. But Valeera was never reliant on the stealth part, just the untargetable. So insane buffs for her. Even the stealth rework is a buff.
If Nova wouldn't be so risky to play people would cry about her in QM day 1. But now it'll be Valeera only, enemy and ally :D.
Most impressions I have read have said Valeera is bad, outside of her silence which is over tuned. The biggest problem being the 3 seconds of stealth required to use an opener from range when everyone can see you for the duration of that 3 seconds.
Valeera never relied on stealth or the teleport range. It was just a nice perk. Most of the pros who played her in HGC (most notably Psalm) more or less played her on the front line and would just Q -> D -> W to get the stun off without being revealed. Ambush was awesome because it gave her a lot more mobility, but I don't think instant Ambush is a handicap for her; I think most people just relied too heavily on it.
Garrote is BUSTED. The silence is almost 3 seconds, and the talents stack up insane amounts of damage.
Didn't even consider how powerful lane bullies are going to be now that Towers do less damage to minions and minions are substantially beefier, as well as the neutral globes.
I'm blizzard will be willing to make changes as needed, I think even removing the 25% less damage to minions would be a sufficient change.
I read a good comment on reddit about the new performance matchmaking:
In reality, Blizzard is deliberately making the trade-off of making your rank no longer represent your pure skill at winning the game, in exchange for faster convergence to your new rank. They don't seem to want to directly say this, because it looks bad, but it's obvious that they're okay with the downsides. What bugs me is that they have been running the two systems side by side for a while and definitely have quantitative information about the effects of the new system, but aren't sharing those either, even though I think it would be the strongest evidence in favor (or against) the system.
The fact that they don't account for someone taking the garden makes it really obvious that the statistical model they apply is not that detailed. As long as you use "macro" statistics from each game rather than looking at each individual action of the player, it will always be abuseable.
His argument that "it will always even out with other stats if you take garden" is the biggest bulls... And honestly Khaldor does come out as some type of shill when he completely accept the premise there. There is no way the extra stats you can deal with garden can be offset by anything you aren't doing while in the garden.
But this is a model that on average will make the matchmaking experience better, but it will most likely be abuseable.
In theory it is possible to quantify the value of every action in relation to the opponent and take compositions perfectly into account (assuming enough data). However, it is extremely complicated and you probably need a large team of the best data scientists in the world to develop a proper solution.
They did share some of their information about the effects of the new system. They said that a master league MMR player would have gone from Bronze to Master in about half the time with the new system. Based on that, I would guess that a bronze player who took over a master account would likewise fall to bronze in half the time.
I don't really think it will be easy to abuse if it works the way they have described.
If you take the garden terror in a situation where someone else is clearly a better choice then you are more likely to lose the game, especially if you consistently do that. If there isn't a clearly better choice, then there isn't really a problem. It compares your stats with other players playing the same hero on the same map, so in that regard it can account for the terror. If the results show that your hero having exceptionally high siege on Garden of Terror isn't something the highest MMR players on that hero do, then it won't be rewarded significantly, and if having exceptional siege from the terror on that particular hero is something losing players often do, it might even result in a negative performance modifier for that hero.
My guess is that the bonus or penalty for each game isn't going to be that much for most players in the average game, and most will rarely earn the maximum bonus or penalty. Most actions someone tries to "abuse" will come at the cost of doing something else. If it works as described, the player who focuses on collecting stats over doing the action that gives them the best chance to win, is more likely to lose and undermine their efforts.
On November 28 2017 10:57 karazax wrote: your stats with other players playing the same hero on the same map, so in that regard it can account for the terror..
the correct person for the terror changes from comp to comp, so actually things like vehicles would completely mess it up.
f you take the garden terror in a situation where someone else is clearly a better choice then you are more likely to lose the game, especially if you consistently do that. If there isn't a clearly better choice, then there isn't really a problem.
Yes but there are many situations where letting someone else take it might be 0.5% better. In those situations you should definitely take it every time you have an opportunity.
And there are situations where going for a low probability play might be correct because otherwise you will lose 100% of the time. But 99% of the time you will die. In these situations it might be beneficial for you not to suicide because it will increase your death penalty timer which is an important factor in the model.
So all of the situations where something is slightly benefical to do but fucks up your stats is something you probably shouldn't be doing.
And think about this: If it wasn't abuseable, then they could be 100% transparent about all of the factors the model they look at. But they rather just be like "nah you can't abuse it no matter what you do. just play to win."
they just dont want people fighting over vehicles as the omg i am gonna get so much rating from being in a terror. They really will have to do something about mercs though. Since you don't get damage stats from them even less people will bother doing them.
With all the stats gathering sites, it will not take long till somene sees a sub 50% winrate player in grandmaster and then more will start to copy this cancerous way of playing. And then we will have a Gazlow one trick invasion. And I am talking about robo gaz ! Oh the dark days ahead ! ;P
The best advice in this new system is, stop quick on losing streaks. Because you will fall deeeeep. Its faster to return, but it still hurts.
On November 28 2017 21:25 FeyFey wrote: they just dont want people fighting over vehicles as the omg i am gonna get so much rating from being in a terror. They really will have to do something about mercs though. Since you don't get damage stats from them even less people will bother doing them.
With all the stats gathering sites, it will not take long till somene sees a sub 50% winrate player in grandmaster and then more will start to copy this cancerous way of playing. And then we will have a Gazlow one trick invasion. And I am talking about robo gaz ! Oh the dark days ahead ! ;P
The best advice in this new system is, stop quick on losing streaks. Because you will fall deeeeep. Its faster to return, but it still hurts.
I am pretty sure there is a damage done to mercs statistics internally in blizzard that they are using.
Obviously nobody outside of Blizzard has any personal experience with the system yet, but I have read/watched all the interviews, Q&A's, and reddit questions I can, so this is my thoughts based on what I know so far:
It's impossible to have a sub 50% win rate and advance based on the information shared so far. Winning is worth a minimum of double the performance adjustment, and I suspect most people will very rarely earn the maximum bonus or penalty.
Remember that it's possible to get a negative modifier if the stats you are producing mirror those of a lower MMR player, so attempts to "abuse" the situation better earn you a win or your efforts might actually earn you a penalty rather than a bonus.
They are measuring things that aren't on the scoreboard like capturing merc camps so that will be rewarded. There are over 20 stats being measured for every hero, though obviously some like CC time won't apply if your hero has no CC.
Not knowing all the metrics and how much they are being weighed for each hero is part of what makes it hard to abuse. No single stat is going to guarantee you a good performance rating.
My impression based on the Q&A's and interviews given so far is that there is probably a max contribution for each stat, so "abusing" an obvious stat like damage on an assassin has a point of diminishing returns once you have earned the maximum contribution for that stat.
On top of that, Travis said that if the assassin hero you are playing has high damage numbers at all levels of play, that wouldn't be a weighted stat, but rather a stat that might give a negative adjustment if it wasn't high.
Having caps on how much each stat can contribute to your overall performance is one way they could make the Garden Terror not matter as much. They could measure what a grand master MMR player on the hero you are playing does in siege and hero damage without the terror and set that or slightly above that as the level needed to earn max bonus for that stat on Garden of Terror. The terror would make it easier to hit that cap of course, but each stat only contributes a portion to your performance adjustment.
Weighted stats are only worth ~10-20% more than unweighted stats.
It's not going to be perfect and 100% accurately reward every single action you do in every game, which is why winning and losing matters much more to your advancement.
It's likely that there will be flaws that need tweaks. If it works the way they claim it does, people cause their team to lose because they are trying to find a way to "abuse" the system is probably going to be a bigger problem than people getting unfair advancement because they found a way to abuse the system.
Obviously if one or more things doesn't work the way they have described, then many of these points won't be accurate. Until we see it live we can only speculate based on the information given.
On November 28 2017 21:25 FeyFey wrote: they just dont want people fighting over vehicles as the omg i am gonna get so much rating from being in a terror. They really will have to do something about mercs though. Since you don't get damage stats from them even less people will bother doing them.
With all the stats gathering sites, it will not take long till somene sees a sub 50% winrate player in grandmaster and then more will start to copy this cancerous way of playing. And then we will have a Gazlow one trick invasion. And I am talking about robo gaz ! Oh the dark days ahead ! ;P
The best advice in this new system is, stop quick on losing streaks. Because you will fall deeeeep. Its faster to return, but it still hurts.
I am pretty sure there is a damage done to mercs statistics internally in blizzard that they are using.
And I am pretty sure that people aiming only for shown stats will not care . As they are the ones that stopped doing mercs after they changed that. Before they were the ones rushing to mercs.
To be a bit more serious about the weighted stats. I am sure they learned alot from Overwatch in that regard. But I dont think they found a solution to the mercy situation. Though it will probably never be that bad. Why take Gust if Hinterlands will most likely help your rating more. Winrate might be a bit lower, but the individual rating will offset that. If talent choices change the weighting, people will find the best weighted talents and so on.
In the end that system will either bring normal players faster to where they should be. But it will introduce anomalies (behaviour not aimed at winning) and tilts will have more severe demoralizing effect. Or it won't matter, because its effect is to low compared to winning or losing and they just wasted their time implenting it.
The only positiv thing is, that they can introduce rewards if someone performs exceptional well :D.
Not knowing all the metrics and how much they are being weighed for each hero is part of what makes it hard to abuse. No single stat is going to guarantee you a good performance rating.
Not really when they openly admit they don't take into account Guardian of Terror. That's not even that complex so more complex stuff like getting vision of an area, winning time for your teammates by wasting multiple opponents time is 99.99% not something they are looking at.
There are decisions that marginally increases the teams chance of winning but puts makes your stats worse. There are tons of those decisions that you very easily can identify when playing the game and where it's very obvious blizzard isn't quantifying that.
Only looking at 20 numbers is very very little in such a complex game.
They could measure what a grand master MMR player on the hero you are playing does in siege and hero damage without the terror and set that or slightly above that as the level needed to earn max bonus for that stat on Garden of Terror. The terror would make it easier to hit that cap of course, but each stat only contributes a portion to your performance adjustment.
They could definitely do that. But judging by the interview, they aren't.
My 2 cents regarding support changes which seems to gather a lot of criticism: I think its a good idea on paper. One of the reasons I only play QM and not hero league is because I don't want to be forced into a role I don't enjoy. And I just don't find satisfaction in playing supports. I want to be making plays, and I think nerfing supports is a bit of a step in the right direction. Ideally you could play comps with only like a Tassadar or Tyrande as the only support player.
They could measure what a grand master MMR player on the hero you are playing does in siege and hero damage without the terror and set that or slightly above that as the level needed to earn max bonus for that stat on Garden of Terror. The terror would make it easier to hit that cap of course, but each stat only contributes a portion to your performance adjustment.
They could definitely do that. But judging by the interview, they aren't.
I think they are doing that or something similar based on previous comments they have made. Travis has said that you can't focus on a single stat and hope to get a good performance adjustment and that weighted stats are only worth ~10-20% more than other stats.
My guess is that there is a maximum on how much each stat contributes to your over all performance adjustment. Once you have earned the max bonus from that stat it won't matter if you keep getting more with the terror or by focusing on that stat above anything else you could be doing. If you have already hit the max in that category then you would progress faster by doing something in an area you haven't maxed out. Of course even if I am right, we won't know what the max is for each stat, and it would be different on each hero, map and game length.
As for double supports and the upcoming support nerfs, there is a new article from Blizzard about the changes here.
nerfing supports lol. How about nerfing the overbuffed dps and tanks so that you can't run 2 supports. Or release more dps with support skills, like Tyrande. It would help if they stop streamlining supports to do the exact same thing with just other graphical effects. So that more people enjoy playing support.
But lessening the double punish of lower damage and healing when lower level would be something i would love to see.
On November 29 2017 08:32 FeyFey wrote: nerfing supports lol. How about nerfing the overbuffed dps and tanks so that you can't run 2 supports. Or release more dps with support skills, like Tyrande. It would help if they stop streamlining supports to do the exact same thing with just other graphical effects. So that more people enjoy playing support.
But lessening the double punish of lower damage and healing when lower level would be something i would love to see.
Waveclear + healing supports are pretty boring. Definitely wish for more damage/cc+ a bit of heal supports like Tyrande and make them viable as solo supports.
On November 29 2017 08:32 FeyFey wrote: nerfing supports lol. How about nerfing the overbuffed dps and tanks so that you can't run 2 supports. Or release more dps with support skills, like Tyrande. It would help if they stop streamlining supports to do the exact same thing with just other graphical effects. So that more people enjoy playing support.
But lessening the double punish of lower damage and healing when lower level would be something i would love to see.
Waveclear + healing supports are pretty boring. Definitely wish for more damage/cc+ a bit of heal supports like Tyrande and make them viable as solo supports.
We need more stukovs tbh. He has an interesting heal, ccs (silence with E, strong slow with W), area denial (with E), strong melee attack (good vs squishy divers like tracer/genji, or vs mercs), an "emerald wind" (flailing swipe). I really hope they keep giving these kind of tools to supports or else no one will want to play support in hero league. Being a healbot is really not fun to most people (myself included).
As someone who been spamming a ton of Samuro illusion master recently, I am looking somewhat confused/slightly dissapointed with the new changes.
Reduce the cooldown of Advancing Strikes to 8 seconds Now increases the attack damage of Mirror Images by 100% Now also increases Samuro’s Basic Attack damage by 10%
So assuming they mean Image transmission cooldown instead of Advancing strikes, that's a nerf from 6 seconds to 8 seconds. I assume this means you no longer can recall with image back to nexus and then retransfer back to the image with full health. That's unfortunate because the low CD imo made the skillcap very high on the hero.
This feels like a small nerf to how impactful/annoying a high skilled Samuro player can be with the hero.
Further, since mirror image damage is completely irrelevant, why do they bother increasing damage from 9 to 18?
What I right now enjoy about Illusion master is that it made it feel more like a well adapted dota-hero as you can be everywhere on the map. You can take camps. You can push lanes you can attack heroes - as long as you are mechanically good enough. There is nothing else in HOTS that feels like Illusion Samuro and it is quite rewarding to play him well.
And since not a lot of people have complained about this in terms of balance, I don't see why they had to change this?
New Samuro can still too some extent do this, but I feel he now is more of 65% old Samuro + 35% Zeratul.
On November 29 2017 08:32 FeyFey wrote: nerfing supports lol. How about nerfing the overbuffed dps and tanks so that you can't run 2 supports. Or release more dps with support skills, like Tyrande. It would help if they stop streamlining supports to do the exact same thing with just other graphical effects. So that more people enjoy playing support.
But lessening the double punish of lower damage and healing when lower level would be something i would love to see.
Waveclear + healing supports are pretty boring. Definitely wish for more damage/cc+ a bit of heal supports like Tyrande and make them viable as solo supports.
We need more stukovs tbh. He has an interesting heal, ccs (silence with E, strong slow with W), area denial (with E), strong melee attack (good vs squishy divers like tracer/genji, or vs mercs), an "emerald wind" (flailing swipe). I really hope they keep giving these kind of tools to supports or else no one will want to play support in hero league. Being a healbot is really not fun to most people (myself included).
I was in a game the other day and for whatever reason drafted stukov instead of malf to combo with stitches. I don't think I had appreciated how responsive e+d is for a disabling slow--- it was almost as good as malf roots for following up on stitches hooks. I also like that KT-like kit design of having to choose between empowering a disable and empowering a heal sometimes.
Really bliz deserves a huge round of applause for stukov's design.
Regarding Garden Terror & other vehicles - It's pretty likely that for many heroes Siege Damage is a stat that's barely weighted. Furthermore, because it's a per-map basis, the valuation for siege damage may be reduced even further, because the system will detect there's a low correlation between "high siege damage" and "this character is winning", since there will be plenty of games where a hero wins without ever piloting. Remember, the system is looking for patterns of stats that lead to wins - when there's a lot of noise (siege damage on GoT), there won't be much importance placed.
I've found myself wondering why they would do the support changes two weeks before doing the rest of the changes. It feels like you should just do it all in one go rather than leaving us figuring out a meta for two weeks before it all turns on end again.
On November 30 2017 01:11 ChaosOS wrote: Regarding Garden Terror & other vehicles - It's pretty likely that for many heroes Siege Damage is a stat that's barely weighted. Furthermore, because it's a per-map basis, the valuation for siege damage may be reduced even further, because the system will detect there's a low correlation between "high siege damage" and "this character is winning", since there will be plenty of games where a hero wins without ever piloting. Remember, the system is looking for patterns of stats that lead to wins - when there's a lot of noise (siege damage on GoT), there won't be much importance placed.
That's my guess, or they set a maximum bonus you can possibly earn from siege that is achievable even if you don't use the terror. Any extra siege above that cap doesn't benefit your performance rating.
On November 30 2017 01:11 ChaosOS wrote: Regarding Garden Terror & other vehicles - It's pretty likely that for many heroes Siege Damage is a stat that's barely weighted. Furthermore, because it's a per-map basis, the valuation for siege damage may be reduced even further, because the system will detect there's a low correlation between "high siege damage" and "this character is winning", since there will be plenty of games where a hero wins without ever piloting. Remember, the system is looking for patterns of stats that lead to wins - when there's a lot of noise (siege damage on GoT), there won't be much importance placed.
That's my guess, or they set a maximum bonus you can possibly earn from siege that is achievable even if you don't use the terror. Any extra siege above that cap doesn't benefit your performance rating.
They won't do that since the entire point of the system is that they don't pick the winners and losers- the algorithm determines what kind of stats are meaningful from data.
Unfortunately, the data won't be evenly distributed. The only way the system will account for this is in heroes which commonly or always get in the terror. (vikings come to mind)
On November 30 2017 01:11 ChaosOS wrote: Regarding Garden Terror & other vehicles - It's pretty likely that for many heroes Siege Damage is a stat that's barely weighted. Furthermore, because it's a per-map basis, the valuation for siege damage may be reduced even further, because the system will detect there's a low correlation between "high siege damage" and "this character is winning", since there will be plenty of games where a hero wins without ever piloting. Remember, the system is looking for patterns of stats that lead to wins - when there's a lot of noise (siege damage on GoT), there won't be much importance placed.
This doesn't solve the issue. If you play a hero that is expected to do 60k siege damage in a game, but get an additonal +60k siege damage, why would that siege damage be any less valuable than a hero that is expected to get 120k siege damage?
Obviously a proper model is going to reward you for that as long as you are keeping up with the other metrics.
So if it doesn't look at which heroes have been in the terror, then it is going to reward players who gets an usual amount of siege damage no matter what. And siege damage is extremely valueable - for every hero.
Further, because it doesn't look at talents, it cannot effectively predict which heroes are supposed to get siege damage and which aren't as that depends on the talent choices.
May do another active ability in a base kit at some point (like Xul)
They have a brand new pipeline for reworks, hammer being the first, that allows them to be more flexible with the releases, aka balance patch this time around
Would like to add indicators in the future for performance based match making of what you did well to earn your extra points
Niche and general heroes are good, but they may have made too many heroes niche and are working on more generalist too to widen the meta
“This does come up every now and then because the more folks we can get on to PTR, the more feedback we can collect before going live! At the end of the day though, this falls under the eternal question of "what do we deprioritize?" and we feel like right now our attention is better spent developing features for the live game rather than the PTR. Having said that, we would like to do more for special PTR events such as this one in the future. I'm sure we'll keep discussing on our end and if we can find a good solve, it will end up on the PTR eventually.”
There were a couple major reasons why we decided to push the Support changes this week: We knew that this was potentially going to have large balance ramifications and we needed a window of time to collect data and react to those Support changes in isolation of the gameplay changes that are coming in shortly. We did not want to throw a large scale rebalance like this into the game while HGC was going on. When evaluating our release options for these changes, this week was our last golden opportunity that addressed the considerations above.
The target info panel shown at blizzcon is still in development and should be in game within the next few months
Our plan is to communicate things like Diablo's soul count (or baseline quests in general) on the tab screen. I'm not sure where these are at currently but are hopefully coming soon(TM!)
We discussed picking and choosing which Supports to change, how much to change them, etc. We decided to do a bit more of a blanket update, and then from there, we will likely make some individual buffs or nerfs to characters who need further changes. Obviously a character like Kharazim is going to feel the 5% damage reduction more then someone like Lt. Morales.
No current updates to the clan system other than it hasn’t been scrapped and it’s a sizeable update they want to get right
Not currently planning any major changes to Sylvanas until they’ve had a good look at the new data and everything settles from the changes
I think we're okay having some passive abilities. We will be looking to do a Raynor update at some point, which will likely give him an active or a passive/active or something with that update.
Looking to tweak the power of the volskaya mech, in testing now
Hanamura change will be major, expect it to play very differently then it did before
In regard to some healers not being able to solo heal at a high level in the first place, Some healers were pushed to become overly specialized, and while they "could" solo heal, it's true they weren't as optimal as some of the other well rounded healers. This is something that we'll be keeping in mind as we continue to make changes to these characters, and make sure they each feels unique and special, but isn't crippled when facing certain compositions.
They’d like to do a pass on most Specialists to see if we can make them both:
Feel less frustrating to play against
Be viable for more team compositions and more competitive modes
As of right now, we are a bit in the middle of tiering talent abilities. While it's much harder to design and balance, we agree with the community that whenever we can, mixing talent themes should happen since it makes for more interesting heroes. If you look at Muradin's rework as an example, we purposefully kept Perfect Storm at Level 1 and Healing Static at Level 13 for this reason, even though the other talents on those tiers are themed differently. While we'd like to create more talent builds, we are now more wary of having too many talents that directly synergize with one another. We also still see a lot of value in consolidating tiers when we think it should happen, as there are some heroes where we feel it's necessary to do so.
Taking a wait and see approach for the globe changes and globe talents
Specifically for the 2018 Gameplay update, we already have a reactionary patch scheduled to address things that come up just to be on the safe side.
Why the wall changes? We feel that the removal of footprints is better for the game as evidenced by the removal of standalone towers, they eat up space and in an isometric environment with indirect controls they often eat attack clicks. It’s unintuitive to have structures with footprints that minions will never clean up. Walls provide vision and we have no way of communicating this. I understand this is easily solved by other solutions. It promotes degenerative gameplay for Heroes like Illidan, Kel’Thuzad, Chen, etc. who are able to abuse walls when the opposing team has no recourse. On top of this there are situations where these Heroes “need” these structures to be up in order to perform escapes, combos, etc. and if an ally of these Heroes does the right thing and kills them it becomes a point of contention amongst team members. I don’t believe it should ever be a wrong decision to kill enemy structures. The design intent behind walls is to provide an initial “safe area” for the base region—once the base is no longer safe there’s no reason for them to exist.
Kerrigan is reasonably high on our list of characters we want to do a talent update for. I'd love to give a timeline but its not something we're currently working on, so it will be a little ways off.
Paper rework for Chen is on the table and currently being discussed
Removing lightning bond vs making it only castable on heroes: This would have accomplished a lot of our goals too. We ultimately decided to go with removing the Talent because we were trying to reduce the damage dealt by Supports, and felt that the increase of damage available in a team fight is still more than we're comfortable with him having with this new goal in mind. We'll continue to evaluate the Talent's place though. We know that it was a fan favorite for a lot of players.
We have considered releasing maps in different modes to start but decided against it the long run. The best way for us to get the most balanced map possible is to get it into the hands of our players. Players find very different strategies and styles of play in all modes of play.
Rarely, if ever, make balance changes to open up design space for future heroes.
They do want to take a look at Medivhs talents in the future
Why buff lili but nerf the rest, specifically Alex? Li Li's win rate was far lower than we thought it should be, even after a rework. While Alexstrasza was a little low, it was more in line with what we expected from a new Hero release (they always trend up aggressively). There's probably more tuning to be done to Alexstrasza (just like all our supports now that we've made so many changes), so I wouldn't be surprised if we received some changes in the future.
We are planning to rework some of our Support characters in the future, and are looking for ways to make their healing mechanics more interactive. This doesn’t necessarily mean more skillshot healing – but ideally your heals are not always a simple point and click for maximum value. Providing more avenues for mastery growth will help players have a larger impact on a match!
We don't feel like every Hero has to be seen at a competitive level. We're really happy when unique strategies show up every once in a while, but the needs of Esports and Quick Match can be vastly different. Beyond just balance, for Esports we also want to be sure that watching the Hero is fun and that they showcase player skill.
Medivh, Diablo and The Lost Vikings “One of the Heroes listed above is currently in the process of getting a rework!”
Goal is for the 2018 Gameplay update not to affect match duration
We don’t have plans for full MMR decay as we’ve found that players quickly bounce back to a 50% win rate after returning from even extended absences. But, the new matchmaking system that’s rolling out soon factors in how long it’s been since you last played as part of its rating. The effect is similar, but it’s not a permanent reduction in MMR like decay would be.
Expect to see more cleanse like abilities on supports that reward timing and precision
Double support vs single support stats for performance adjustment: the overall impact on their performance metric is negligible. They heal a bit less, but make up for that in other metrics since they're doing other things instead of healing during that time.
To give you an idea of the statistical impact of solo vs. double support, on a scale of 0 to 1 where 0.5 is average performance, the difference in average performance for a support in a single support comp and double support comp is less than 0.01.
I know Hammer is hard to play with, but please let this be the first rework they won't mess up the character. And sad to hear that the next hero releases will be boring hehe.
Whenever they talk about updates, I always read: "these things were to complicated so we made them simpler." and i get so sad.
Didnt they say bots got more clever ? Played ai game because lack of time. They simply ignored me autoattacking them. Only Nazeebo was fun to see with his use 4 skills at the same time zombie wall combo.
On December 01 2017 06:14 FeyFey wrote: Whenever they talk about updates, I always read: "these things were to complicated so we made them simpler." and i get so sad.
The 1st step to understanding HotS is embracing that it's a Dota made for people who play video games once a week
Got back from a week vacation and find the game has had some serious changes. Most seem good or interesting.
Just tried out Hanzo on PTR, he feels a bit odd to play with and the scatter is very map/area limited so it's a bit hard to really gauge him right now so I guess we'll see.
Nova with the new talents has a new build I figured out in Try Mode. Get the Holo Decoy stability and damage talents, the 250% AA talent and Rewind. You can get 3 Holo Decoys up each dealing 50% of your damage by using Rewind and Ghost Protocol. They all benefit from the 250% AA talent and the Holo Decoy stability/talents. Silly damage numbers come from it though it functions a bit as an ultimate since it requires the use of both Rewind and Ghost Protocol which have 60 second cooldowns.
On December 01 2017 23:04 FeyFey wrote: Didnt they say bots got more clever ? Played ai game because lack of time. They simply ignored me autoattacking them. Only Nazeebo was fun to see with his use 4 skills at the same time zombie wall combo.
What difficulty? Most people who play AI games for lack of time play on the easiest setting. That being said the AI isn't anything special even at the hardest difficulty.
I'm going to go fucking mental from the new brawl, people keep picking garbage heroes and my greymane tripling all of their damage isnt enough to win the boss
E: attempt #6, we make it to the boss with a good team of Rehgar/Sonya/Greymane/Artanis/Lucio with nuke and stim. Lucio doesn't nuke any nydus and we die...
e: thought i had it even with ancestral instead of bloodlust on rehgar, we died at 4% boss...
Took three runs to win it. Having Arthas is an absolute must. His AoE slow is so important in crowd control and reducing damage. We had Arthas, Uther, Ragnaros, Xul and Varian. We only took down one nydus in both sets of three and thus had to deal with 4 of those hero zergs but we managed to take them down, if only just.
Gotta say I do actually like this Brawl even if teamwork is a tricky thing. It's something else from random heroes fighting random heroes with some random statistic adjusted.
Priority is on sustained damage, monster damage, and healing myself. Death dealer ensures that you can dodge and kill off little exploding guys, though your W also takes care of those.
The one tricky thing is that Tychus nukes will almost one hit her. So you do need to dodge a bit.
Twin blades varian is also quite good, but one untalented W from valla is enough to kill the little critters that swarm. I think the splash of area damage that valla gives is worth it.
There are a lot of good heroes on the map, its mostly just playing smart and playing to complete rather than speed through it.
I one shot it this week, but have been playing it a bit since. I probably win 40% of the time.
People thinking you can just go straight to the end always end up getting wrecked. Last one I played we had a murky behind us and our Sonya basically said 'Don't have to kill his egg he doesn't do anything', but he proceeded to kill 2 heroes after our Sonya/Varian rushed the banelings and got exploded.
I feel Lucio is best support overall since he can solo heal really easily. Varian tank is good for invuln to explode things, but I have gotten away without having him.
I like Rag for this a lot, he is an aoe monster and requires little healing generally since your q will heal for quite a bit.
I think you can beat this with any well rounded group that has proper aoe/single target damage. My best time is still 11 minutes though since its all pubs, hoping to get maybe a 10 minute something eventually.
On December 02 2017 04:01 Ej_ wrote: Gave up after 13 attempts. I'll try to get someone to party it with later on, Solo is just like solo q lmao
Really? Had zero problem with the brawl, both on the earlier easy mode and on the harder mode. Never lost, and I was with people who made plenty of dumb mistakes >.> 4 wins in 4 tries.
I like using Xul, personally; the W cooldown talent means I have non-stop W sweeps for the entire brawl until the boss lol. And it's definitely more about playing smart rather than speedrunning it. I think the harder mode was won with us using double-support, fwiw.
Edit: Out of curiosity, do you not get a completed brawl if you fail? Do you need to win this brawl for credit?
On December 02 2017 04:01 Ej_ wrote: Gave up after 13 attempts. I'll try to get someone to party it with later on, Solo is just like solo q lmao
Really? Had zero problem with the brawl, both on the earlier easy mode and on the harder mode. Never lost, and I was with people who made plenty of dumb mistakes >.> 4 wins in 4 tries.
I like using Xul, personally; the W cooldown talent means I have non-stop W sweeps for the entire brawl until the boss lol. And it's definitely more about playing smart rather than speedrunning it. I think the harder mode was won with us using double-support, fwiw.
Edit: Out of curiosity, do you not get a completed brawl if you fail? Do you need to win this brawl for credit?
Xul is insane on the new brawl, a must have on the team.
My team that won had an Artanis, Zarya, Lucio, Rhegar, and me on Xul, took me about 13 tries but eventually got it. Now they need to come out with one that's just as difficult but different and possibly even more expansive, the heroic one feels amazing.
On December 03 2017 12:20 jpg06051992 wrote: Xul is insane on the new brawl, a must have on the team.
My team that won had an Artanis, Zarya, Lucio, Rhegar, and me on Xul, took me about 13 tries but eventually got it. Now they need to come out with one that's just as difficult but different and possibly even more expansive, the heroic one feels amazing.
I really think double support is actually a bad idea on this map. You generally need to keep the groups cleared as much as possible to prevent taking so much damage.
On my last win we ran Lucio, Sonya, Varian, Valla, Xul. We melted bosses and waves so healing is never a giant issue. Even stitches we killed before he un gorged his target. If you fall behind a lot in damage 2 supports will be helpful, but I feel that just adding damage to clear our stuff even more quickly will save you healing in the long run. Especially heroes that have built in healing like Sonya/Varian/Rag, etc.
The 2 hardest parts are in phase 2 where you get to Zagara with all the eggs, double nydus, and abathur spawn. And then the phase 2 check point at around 20-25 seconds left where you get like a quad spawn + 2 bosses + Aba.
I've lost a few because people don't look for Aba/Murky egg though. It's much easier to play safe and clear the map than try to rush and get picked off by them. Aba's ult does like 20% of tanks hp per hit which is pretty dangerous.
Finally won it, took only 3 tries with Xul (got twin blades varian, sonya (with leap lmao), monk (with palm???) and artanis on the winning run). Still got triggered when teammates didn't focus down nyduses and nuked the boss.
Played Rehgar every time and got a bunch of wins. Lost twice when someone picked Illidan, and once when I got caught in a stun chain from Diablo/Boss which prevented me from using my Storm Shield/Healing Pulse and snowballed into the entire team wiping.
Also, they removed Lightning Bond which made me sad .
Dragon’s Arrow (R) •Damage increased from 100/200/350 to 130/260/390
Talents •Level 20
Play of the Game (R) •Damage increased from 120 to 132
Bug Fixes Heroes & Talents
Sgt. Hammer: The Hyper-Cooling Engines talent will no longer grant cooldown reduction from basic attacks against non-Heroic targets while in Siege Mode.
Tychus & Stitches: Tychus can now be affected by Stitches’ Gorge while in Commandeer Odin.
A bit unrelated to anything else here, but just wanted to give my thoughts on stuff I realized about heroes of the storm, and maybe someone else can relate to it. (long rant incomming).
I historially have prefered QM as it made it just easier to spam the heroes I like. And when I found out that Samuro illusion build was really fun that was all I did.
While I wasn't doing super wel in terms of win/rate I kept thinking "oh I just need to be better mechanically", and gradaully I did get better and after around 100 games I felt like I had a pretty good understanding of how to play him.
And yet I kept on losing, and at one point in time i had a 6 game losing streak despite actually playing very well throughout all the games. But my "stupid" teammates just kept on feeding.
Thus I decided to watch the replays and expect to see horrendous mistakes from my teammates, however what I noticed was that they actually weren't that bad. Instead they made small errors that just snowballed hard against them. And then it hit me how extremely draft reliant a hero like Samuro is. If he is playing together with a 4-man core that cannot hold their own --> you lose the game regardless of how well you play.
So I decided to try out some ranked games and only pick samuro when it fit the comp. And then after a while I also started to discover which maps he was good on and which he wasn't (something smarter people probably would have figured out within a 100 games).
And slowly as I tried to get to diamond rank, my attitude changed. Rather than reflecting after a loss in terms of "how could i play better mechanically or who fucked up on my team" I started to think "was there something I could have done differently in the draft to win?".
Recently I had a game where I might have played the best mechanically ever but our team's tank (stiches) just kept on feeding like shit and as a consequence my teammates hard lost the 4v4. If it had been a QM game I would have blamed Stiches for the loss and had not thought any further about that game.
And while Stiches definitely didn't play well the truth was probably also that he isn't a good tank to go with Samuro. You probably need a tank that can survive and escape on its own.
Another another thing I noticed about Samuro Illusion but he is probably the most unappredicated hero by your teammates. You can be everywhere at once and annoy 2-3 opponents, then instantly take camp, then push 2 lanes at the same time all within 40 seconds. And noone on your team is gonna notice anything you are doing.
Comparably whenever I play LV and our team wins, I usually get MVP and tons of votes despite the fact that I might have made a ton more errors and contributed a lot less to teamfights than with Illusion master. But the teammates are just impressed when you can control 3 vikings at 3 different locations.
Anyway, that was a long rant and I made diamond 5 earlier this night which was my goal. Not really sure I will continue playing atm since most of the good "safe" picks in hero mode just aren't that fun. And the more I play the more I feel like Samuro Illusion is just a niche pick that you can pick on certain maps late in the draft when you have seen most of the comps from both teams.
I probably wish that drafting mattered less and mechanically execution had more importance. The idea that it is better to play a strong hero in the meta that you played 10 games of than a hero you mastered through hundreds of games doesn't motivate with me to keep on refining with my skill.
For instance I was doing extremely well whenever I picked Muradin despite not feeling like I was doing anything that took any resemblance of skill. That said, there is admittelly a charm to the strategic aspect of drafting and Heroes is very fun regardless. Further, the new patch does look interesting - definitely gonna try out reworked zeratul.
Just to give some "evidence" to your teammates not noticing your plays. This is a great example:
Like this is an amazing outplay, and yet teammates are completely quiet. Most likely because they don't see anything of what's the Samuro player actually doing. Hence my theory on Samuro being the least appreciated hero in the game.
Like this is an amazing outplay, and yet teammates are completely quiet. Most likely because they don't see anything of what's the Samuro player actually doing. Hence my theory on Samuro being the least appreciated hero in the game.
Insane Fan Theory: people don't say anything, because they don't queue games to chat.
Like this is an amazing outplay, and yet teammates are completely quiet. Most likely because they don't see anything of what's the Samuro player actually doing. Hence my theory on Samuro being the least appreciated hero in the game.
Insane Fan Theory: people don't say anything, because they don't queue games to chat.
it's quite normal when someone make a big plays a teammate or two will say "nice". You get multiple big resets with li ming or genji and that's gonna happen occationally.
And this was literally one of the biggest outplays you ever are gonna see in your heroes of the storm playing career, most would have said something. But chances are they had no idea what he actually did because like 80% of your actions goes unhidden for the untrained eye.
Also people definitely do like chatting when it comes to pointing fingers.
Anyway, I also just watched a lot of this Onetrickpony guy on his Twitch channel. He has absolutely amazing teamfight mechanics and dodges a ton of damage during teamfights. In contrast if you watch someone like Grubby he mostly just uses clones to escape.
But his play has made me more realize how you can have an impact on your team even when they aren't doing that well. Definitely still has lots to learn and I doubt there is any other hero in the game with a similar skillcap.
as long as Vikings exist, no one will be able to claim least appreciated hero spot over Eric. Visual Indication for Samuro isn't the best either if you are on his side.
Heroes brings in individual rating as Overwatch removes it at high level because of issues in that region with it haha.
Btw does anyone know of other small streamers who just mass spams (and has "mastered") one hero. I much rather watch such a stream than someone who is a good player that plays everything.
Their hope is that stealth heroes will be easier to counter at lower levels where they might as well have been completely invisible, but stronger at higher levels where stealth was spotted 99% of the time. In general the intention is that they will be stronger as heroes, but stealth itself will be weaker.
Celebrate Winter Veil this year by with a stocking full of in-game treats that you can earn by playing Heroes of the Storm! The event kicks off Tuesday, December 12, and lasts until the week of January 8, so be sure to complete the quests below before they disappear!
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Outlines will now display on terrain when playing Junkrat or Lúcio. This should allow for a more accurate view of what can be used for Frag Launcher bounces and Wall Rides.
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Gingerboard Blueberry Gingerboard Frosted Gingerboard Moldy Gingerboard Strawberry Gingerboard Reign-Deer Arctic Reign-Deer – This Mount will be awarded to players who complete the Winter Veil 2017 event quest chain.
On December 10 2017 09:08 Hider wrote: Btw does anyone know of other small streamers who just mass spams (and has "mastered") one hero. I much rather watch such a stream than someone who is a good player that plays everything.
there used to be a lot of streamers like this, but this is an age for flex players since the game has turned into rock/paper/scissors in the draft. You could probably spam something like sonya or ETC all day though.
As an aside, I tried out the new patch in hero league today.
Matchmaking is a mess, as expected at the start of a season--- according to hotslogs I am playing against people 400-600 MMR below my account now, and it really shows. Games are super easy and I'm seeing stupid comps like double stealth/double support. Bliz really really really needs to stop with the loosening of confidence at the start of seasons. It's just leads to unfun games for a quarter of the season.
Some games are snowballing out of control in really unsatisfying ways. For instance, if you cap a bruiser and boss and push as 5, it is really hard to stop. The mage minion in the bruiser camp is difficult to kill from afar (I can't even see him when there are enough creeps everywhere), which means everything has spell armor. Small firebats give buildings vulnerability, so you have to defend them when they are pushing on your core almost like they are a boss. With a few catapults they will just Kill You. Immortals on BoE are crazy powerful now--- my first game on the map we pushed a keep on the first immortal. I think the loss of the second tower means diving over the fort and into the enemy team is much easier now.
In case it wasn't clear--- I really really really hate the merc changes. Merc camps should not be this powerful.
Stealth changes are OK I guess. So far it has made stealth heroes extremely easy to play against, as they sacrifice waveclear and mercing for high burst, but are easy for tanks to guard against. I've heard valeera is really good, but every time she went in on someone I just poison speared or power slid her and she was dead. Doesn't seem very good from the perspective of an opposing warrior in the context of an actual teamfight. But maybe that's not the real power of her.
Hard to comment on performance based MMR when we're still in the awfulness of early season matchmaking hell. So far the screen caps on reddit have not impressed me. I thought it would be like a +/- 10 thing, but it looks like it can go as much as +/- 40-50. A quarter of your games points in bonus or deduction is simply not right and doesn't align with what I would envision when bliz says things like, "the most important thing is winning"
On December 14 2017 21:08 karazax wrote: Placement bug means your probably better off waiting to do hero league until they patch it.
unless the bug that post is talking about has affected the last two seasons as well, waiting for it to be fixed isn't going to help very much. People being wildly misplaced at season starts is old news.
there used to be a lot of streamers like this, but this is an age for flex players since the game has turned into rock/paper/scissors in the draft. You could probably spam something like sonya or ETC all day though.
Yeh that's probably true. I guess Greymane is a pretty strong allrounder as well. But that was also kinda why Samuro was so interesting because after you learned to teamfight with illusion master he was insanely strong against everything and could fit into most comps. This was ofc quite difficult to do well however.
However, he is useless postpatch since he doesn't deal any damage over time meaning he is just a worse version of a burst assasin. Kinda sad, had otherwise planned to get into master league within a 100 games or so.
there used to be a lot of streamers like this, but this is an age for flex players since the game has turned into rock/paper/scissors in the draft. You could probably spam something like sonya or ETC all day though.
Yeh that's probably true. I guess Greymane is a pretty strong allrounder as well. But that was also kinda why Samuro was so interesting because after you learned to teamfight with illusion master he was insanely strong against everything and could fit into most comps. This was ofc quite difficult to do well however.
I think Rehgar also fits into this mold of "generalist hero who can fit into most comps quite well"
Hider
However, he is useless postpatch since he doesn't deal any damage over time meaning he is just a worse version of a burst assasin. Kinda sad, had otherwise planned to get into master league within a 100 games or so.
I have long felt a little bad for samaro. It feels like they just can't balance his kit right. I've also always felt like the controls on illusion master are clunky, but maybe they have changed that now. There was a bit of a delay when switching between illusions with my keyboard which led to frustrating instead of feeling like I was microing 3 illusions.
I have long felt a little bad for samaro. It feels like they just can't balance his kit right. I've also always felt like the controls on illusion master are clunky, but maybe they have changed that now.
He was amazing before for people who can control multiple units at once (probably need RTS background). Besides a few small situations, I don't think he was clunky.
However, with illusion master you would usually rely on your images to wear your opponents down, while microing the images around so they appeared as if they were the real samuro. Then sneak behind a target, hit it a bit to wear it down, then make 3 new images in anticipation of a skillshot being targetted at you.
Spread them around and find a new target you could potentially kill. Sometimes you had to go for the squishy. Other times you would help kill down the enemy tank/frontliner.
It was a ton of decisions you could take at any given point in time during a teamfight and you had to take a lot of variables into account very very fast. It was very fun because there was always something you could learn.
People who say you only use images to poke from a safe distance doens't know illusion master because if you only play it like that while being safe with real Samuro you don't do enough in teamfights. To play it well means you had to take risks which creates for interesting gameplay.
The mistake I previously made with Samuro was trying to play him as a splitpusher. However, while he is great at soaking, he isn't good at pushing due to images dying to towers. Instead, you need to always be there when your team fights, because his potential DPS output is unmatched.
With new Samuro your images don't do anything basically. This means that throughout the entire game your damage will usually be around 40% lower of what it was previously.
Further, he can't engage as well as previously due to stealth-change. And you are not rewarded for teleporting into a teamfight because (a) you can't escape with stealth and (b) the teleportation cooldown increased from 6 to 8 seconds.
And how was he compensated? he got more damage on the real samuro, he can now use his Q to pointdirection on where he wants to go, and images don't die to towers.
However, those buffs are nowhere near to compensate for the image damge nerf alone. I don't think there has ever been a bigger nerf to an ultimate in the history of heroes of the storm. It went from amazing in the hands of a skilled player to probably useless. Even without taking stealth-changes into account, the ultimate was nerfed!
The Onetrickpony guy used to have a 64% win/rate in masters on Samuro over a 300 game sample size. When he streamed placement matches on the new Samuro he went 1-3 and basically did nothing all games. I watched 30+ games of him with old Samuro and I put all those 4 games as the absolute bottom in terms of how much he did for his team.
I've seen some argue that the way to play samuro now is by taking less risks and using images from a safe distance, so you just go into a fight, poke a bit and then teleport back. From a game-design perspective that is much less interesting and skill-based and balance-wise just makes him a worse zeratul.
Bladestorm might be viable but that ultimate is kinda boring. For me it's illusion master or nothing. Honestly, I think Blizzard didn't really think about Illusion master or understand how it worked when they made this change.
If I have to guess I think they look at your individual performance over the last 30-60 games and then try to estimate a rank before on that performance. That's obviously a very dangerous method and it's perhaps why some platinum players could get masters mmr --> Because they had a few recent insane performances.
And thus if you checked out some of the accounts of the players who were heavily promoted, I bet that they were trending upwards.
From my experience, I was doing very well on Samuro and generally on any hero I played I was outputting good numbers while rarely dying, and thus felt like I could continue jumping ranks relatively fast if he had not been nerfed. But it was obviously super frustrating to play the placement matches because suddenly I had no champion pool.
One thing that surprised me negatively was that the players still made shitty drafts. I had 2 games where I had an early pick and my teammates effectively counterpicked themselves later in the draft.
I am obviously no draft-expert but prior to the games I thought "we have no real range here, they can poke us easily down and engage/kill us if we get to close." And as a consequence we got stomped without me feeling that anyone on the team played that badly.
Perhaps I was just unlucky, but I expected experienced master league players at that level to have big enough champion pools so that those who pick late in the draft can adapt well.
Is anyone else having difficulty adjusting to the new laning dynamics? I feel like I'm being overly aggressive to get health globes and the minion timings are so much different. I end up taking way too much damage.
Any advice? I consider myself flex but I'm usually running tank or support.
On December 15 2017 07:04 DudeMan260 wrote: Is anyone else having difficulty adjusting to the new laning dynamics? I feel like I'm being overly aggressive to get health globes and the minion timings are so much different. I end up taking way too much damage.
Any advice? I consider myself flex but I'm usually running tank or support.
It feels like everything is in flux right now. Hard to tell since matchmaking is up in the air(somehow yesterday I was hard winning a lane as etc vs junkrat), but I expect laning meta to shift pretty majorly on many maps as people figure out what they are doing. How quickly that meta settles depends on whether Bliz nerfs the merc camp buffs or not.
Clearly dominating a lane when you have a globe quest(like ETC) is really powerful in the early game. I think regen globe quests in general might need to be re-jiggered too.
My stealth experience has been funny. People make mistakes much easier now when you lurk around them, adding that you are true invis when standing still its a nightmare for some heroes without easy unstealth skills. Alongside the buffs it makes it really easy to play stealthies now. But after people realise that stealth heroes are aware that you see them when you move, people will stop throwing their lifes away thinking the stealthy isn't aware that they are seen.
Thought Valeera would be the best, but Nova's changes make her a nightmare to be up against.
I like that regen globe control gets rewarded. Before it was an annoying quest binding you to a lane. Now if you do good you get a huge powerspike. Had Jaina regen globe talent done sub 6 minutes on braxis. Paired with a Zagara. Enemy just exploded.
On December 10 2017 09:08 Hider wrote: Btw does anyone know of other small streamers who just mass spams (and has "mastered") one hero. I much rather watch such a stream than someone who is a good player that plays everything.
I used to spam Illidan all day eryday, but he's been hurting in the meta for like...2 years now lol.
EDIT: Btw, I think Johanna is really bad in the new patch. She doesn't add anything to the laning phase and doesn't peel or threaten enough to be dangerous.
I used to spam Illidan all day eryday, but he's been hurting in the meta for like...2 years now lol.
Would love to watch an illidan actually. At least when I practic him in QM i feed like shit every game. It might also be because he doens't do anything with no support against high DPS compositions.
I'm fairly certain the MM is still fucked considering the range of players I'm paired with (lowest so far has been a silver 4, highest masters - I've never been below plat and ended last season in diamond 3 and haven't played this season yet. I'm 3-0 in placements).
On December 18 2017 02:40 Ghostcom wrote: I'm fairly certain the MM is still fucked considering the range of players I'm paired with (lowest so far has been a silver 4, highest masters - I've never been below plat and ended last season in diamond 3 and haven't played this season yet. I'm 3-0 in placements).
Problems with MM, map changes leading to snowbally games, and the rebirth of valeera and nova in QM have prompted me to take a break from heroes for the first time since beta. I hope they fix the issues, but the game is worse than it has been in quite a while right now.
I personally don't find valeera and nova all that bad, but I mostly play HL. The MM on the other hand is seriously making me reconsider. I'm 5-0 so far. Still had a silver 2 in my last game.
On December 18 2017 19:30 Ghostcom wrote: I personally don't find valeera and nova all that bad, but I mostly play HL. The MM on the other hand is seriously making me reconsider. I'm 5-0 so far. Still had a silver 2 in my last game.
they are only a serious problem in QM. ruins the game mode.
I got placed in Plat 5 this season and climbed to Plat 4 after a couple of games. Last season I ended in Silver 1 after dropping all the way from Plat 5, due to an incredible series of bad matches.
In my experience MMR hell is absolutely real, I just could not carry games at all: people raging or with no clue about the game made it pretty much impossible. So I waited for the season to end.
Thus far I was lucky this season and managed to win games even when we had bots on our team, because the level of my opponents has been abysmal. I still wonder why at Platinum I have to play with/against people who don't even understand the basics of the game (i.e., laning).
My mechanics are not very strong, I basically win games (when I win) just by drafting properly and trying to propose an overall gameplan for the team. I don't find balance to be bad: the laning/merc changes made the game a lot different for sure, but necessarily broken, from what I have seen.
My mechanics are not very strong, I basically win games (when I win) just by drafting properly and trying to propose an overall gameplan for the team
In my experience MMR hell is absolutely real, I just could not carry games at all
Sounds like you think that if you tell your teammates what they should do, then you deserve to be in a higher rank.
The idea of "overall gameplan" also never works in my opinion. You have to tell them what to do over the next 30 seconds. A longer timeframe than that doesn't work.
In my experience MMR hell is absolutely real, I just could not carry games at all
Sounds like you think that if you tell your teammates what they should do, then you deserve to be in a higher rank.
The idea of "overall gameplan" also never works in my opinion. You have to tell them what to do over the next 30 seconds. A longer timeframe than that doesn't work.
I don't necessarily agree with that. You can still feed in a game plan before the game starts like, "They have a very strong early game, so let's just try and soak until 10 before we try to fight." Ofc, trying to explain "get ogres at X:XX just before immortals, then all rotate for the obj except Ragnaros, play safe and let him double soak, let them get first tribute, etc" is basically impossible.
What I've found to be useful is trying to designate roles for people at the beginning of the game (which sometimes works if they're receptive). If you can convince one person they're the solo laner or the jungler or the guy who clears waves late game, it makes things flow a lot more smoothly. The biggest problem with most players is that they often forget the role they're supposed to play, so you'll have support players solo soaking a side lane or your solo laner trying to brawl in mid, etc. If you just remind them of their role or give suggestions as to what their agenda should be, you don't really have to walk them through every single motion.
They have a very strong early game, so let's just try and soak until 10 before we try to fight." Ofc, trying to explain "get ogres at X:XX just before immortals, then all rotate for the obj except Ragnaros, play safe and let him double soak, let them get first tribute, etc" is basically impossible.
-Nova nerfed (LUL) -Hanzo and Thrall buffed -Nazeebo's 20 with a big nerf -BW buffed -Lucio and Stukov nerfed -Alexstraza Rs buffed/nerfed -Garrosh castrated, because of HL -D.Va buffed -Niche talents on Artanis and Lili buffed
New matchmaking system works well for me, i've played like 6 or 7 placement games only with masters which was weird, but in the end got masters too.
On the other hand quickmatch is a clownfiesta for me these days, sometimes map and enemy hero compositions hard counters our comp on a maps like Braxis (i.e we got abathur and no frontliner when they got tyrande, thrall and nazeebo) as a result huge snowball.
Kinda digging the Malfurion moonfire/damage build. It feels quite rewarding to land them and then follow up with auto's and throughout an entire game you can contribute quite alot to the overall damage output of your team. I think it might also be ideal if you use the build on a 2 support composition because you then play as a hybrid support/poke mage.
I kinda wish that this was what supports were by default - in temrs of damage - and then were balanced around less healing. And instead default regeneration could be doubled/trippled for all heroes so they didn't have to go back to the base all the time.
On December 22 2017 10:12 Hider wrote: Kinda digging the Malfurion moonfire/damage build. It feels quite rewarding to land them and then follow up with auto's and throughout an entire game you can contribute quite alot to the overall damage output of your team. I think it might also be ideal if you use the build on a 2 support composition because you then play as a hybrid support/poke mage.
I kinda wish that this was what supports were by default - in temrs of damage - and then were balanced around less healing. And instead default regeneration could be doubled/trippled for all heroes so they didn't have to go back to the base all the time.
The way Strife solved this was by giving all heroes out-of-combat regeneration for something like 2% of their life per second. That way you could do a bit of a brawling and then either chill for a few seconds under tower or rotate to another lane while regaining life. If you needed to heal to full quickly or your opponent had the ability to harass or dive you under tower, it was still beneficial to back. Strife actually had a lot of really neat ideas....
Anyways, I think Malfurion is one of the bottom tier supports, but he does do an incredible job of solo laning in a double support composition now with that level 1 talent.
The way Strife solved this was by giving all heroes out-of-combat regeneration for something like 2% of their life per second. That way you could do a bit of a brawling and then either chill for a few seconds under tower or rotate to another lane while regaining life.
Why not just make it both out of combat and in combat. That's how support healing works and if you reduce the support healing a tad it seems fair to compensate it in the same way. (probably not 2% then, that would be too much).
Also, I think it's just more "fun" from a design-perspective if you "reward" players for fighting more rather than going out of combat for a while.
On December 23 2017 23:14 Ej_ wrote: On a side note, Hanzo is hilariously strong on Cursed. Even teamfights aside, ricocheting his arrows in the boss and hard camp is crazy.
yeh just watched meinkraft play him on grubbys stream. I think you need significant engage/burst comp to beat that because you lose complete map control if you just let him live.
Most of the time, I consider the complaints on reddit nevermind the bnet forums to be completely over the top, but after watching Grubby's stream tonight for an hour or so, lots of stuff seems broken, bugged or at least quite problematic. First he lost a HL game on Warhead in six or seven minutes snowballing ridiculously, then quickmatch sends his five solo-qeueuing squishies (among them three mages) against a premade with Dva and Zarya.
I'm currently not playing much, and if I do with Unranked the game mode with the fewest issues, but even there group composition is all over the place. As a Gold I'm currently matched with Silvers till - quite frequently - Masters, and not every Master is happy to have me on his team...
Game is way too snowbally. Doesn't really have much to do with rank distribution. More about merc changes and regens. If a team has a better early game comp and comes a bit ahead --> Can end < 8 minutes. Extremely unfun.
In my opinion Blizzard have completely ruined the game. The other day was the breaking point where I actually uninstalled Heroes out of anger.
Thanks to them screwing up PBMM, purging it from the game and ruining everybody’s hopes at making Ranked a better experience, matchmaking is now abysmal. Games takes too long to queue up for, there’s a huge amount of draft dodging which is frustrating when you spend 4 mins drafting heroes then get booted back to menu for the fifth time in a row, teammates are often idiots who won’t follow pings or communicate because all the people who take the game seriously ditched it after PBMM flopped, the meta changes have now killed the viability of all late game heroes, and the experience has now turned more toxic than ever.
On a less related note, the report system in Blizzard’s games (not just Heroes but also SC2 and WoW) is also a complete and utter joke. The automated silence system encourages players to abuse the report system to try and land a player they don’t like with a ban. It’s also enabled hate speech in public chat because players know there’s no consequence to spouting racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, or otherwise hateful crap in chat. I’m talking the kind of speech that would get a player permanently banned from any other online game.
On January 02 2018 13:52 Clbull wrote: In my opinion Blizzard have completely ruined the game. The other day was the breaking point where I actually uninstalled Heroes out of anger.
Thanks to them screwing up PBMM, purging it from the game and ruining everybody’s hopes at making Ranked a better experience, matchmaking is now abysmal. Games takes too long to queue up for, there’s a huge amount of draft dodging which is frustrating when you spend 4 mins drafting heroes then get booted back to menu for the fifth time in a row, teammates are often idiots who won’t follow pings or communicate because all the people who take the game seriously ditched it after PBMM flopped, the meta changes have now killed the viability of all late game heroes, and the experience has now turned more toxic than ever.
On a less related note, the report system in Blizzard’s games (not just Heroes but also SC2 and WoW) is also a complete and utter joke. The automated silence system encourages players to abuse the report system to try and land a player they don’t like with a ban. It’s also enabled hate speech in public chat because players know there’s no consequence to spouting racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, or otherwise hateful crap in chat. I’m talking the kind of speech that would get a player permanently banned from any other online game.
Here is the QQ thread, which might be better suited for your venting. I've gone ahead and stickied it at the top of the forums since I think a lot of people are finding some frustration with the newest patch.
I made the wise decision to avoid playing during the holidays.
Meh, considering the entire MM debacle I think it is fair to complain here as well. I've found myself playing less and less because the games I do get are so one-sided it's not fun. I also find I get to play with people ranging from silver to GM in any given game (QM or unranked). It's pretty damn terrible currently.